


The Green

by Enchantable



Category: Cursed (TV 2020)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Major Character Injury, coda to 1x10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:29:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25393891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enchantable/pseuds/Enchantable
Summary: A monk, a squirrel and a horse stop by a stream.
Relationships: Squirrel | Percival & The Weeping Monk | Lancelot (Cursed)
Comments: 23
Kudos: 387





	1. Chapter 1

Pain is an old friend.

Still, he’s never had horse riding hurt quite this much.

There is also a good chance he forgot his sword, but the idea of checking is exhausting. And if he lets go of his charge or the reins, he’s not sure that he can pick either up again. The boy is quiet for which he’s grateful, he’s not a conversationalist under the best of circumstances and these are anything but.

“It’s getting dark,” the boy pipes up. He blinks and realizes so it is, he thought his vision was fading, “we should stop.”

“We cannot,” he says.

“The horse is tired.”

Not for the first time in the past few days, he wonders why God is testing him like this. If he’s being kept alive as penance, if this is punishment or opportunity. He’s forgotten the difference in the unending wave of pain, but he supposes it doesn’t matter now. Besides if he dies and the horse dies, all this will have been for nothing. If the horse survives the boy at least has a chance. He grunts and ignores the new patch of wet that spreads. He turns the steed off the path, at the very least there’s trees and water nearby. It’s not much but it will do.

Getting off the horse hurts worse.

He grips the saddle and takes a deep breath, fighting back the wave of pain and nausea that blackens his vision. Morbidly he wonders if Gawain is happy that the Ash people will be gone from this continent again, but the thought comes back to him that he isn’t. Wherever he is. He’s good at seeing a lie, he knows those words about brotherhood were the truth. There’s a tug on his cloak and he looks to see his charge has gotten off the horse on his own. The fact that he didn’t hear him, well that’s another sign that this is about to end.

“There’s water this way,” the boy tells him, “lean on the horse.”

“Are you always this clever?” He asks.

The boy shrugs and he smiles at his ego. He’s unafraid, it’s not something he’s used to seeing from the Fey. Especially one so young. He leans on the horse as they make their way the last few steps to the stream. He lets the horse go and covers his hand as he uses the tree to ease himself down.

The action doesn’t go unnoticed.

“What happens if you touch the forrest?”

“I don’t do that,” he says.

“But what happens if you do?”

He peers upwards. The dying light does him no favors and he’s not foolish enough to think that this means the conversation will be dropped for any reasonable amount of time. He supposes there are worse ways to die. Not that he ever expected his death to be a good one. He opens his eyes when he feels his foot being tapped and looks up into the cross face of his charge. He’s been told again and again that the Fey are animals without manners. That they lack any sense of decency. But his charge looks offended at his silence and that makes him smile.

“What happens?”

“I don’t do that,” he repeats.

“Why not?” He doesn’t have an answer, “Lancelot, tell me why.”

It’s an odd thing to hear his name. He hasn’t heard it in so long, it should sound like the name of a stranger. But it doesn’t. It echoes and rolls through him like a living thing. It brings with it the smell of warm fires and his mother’s bread. Things he hasn’t thought of in so long. Fire was theirs. Fire was familiar. Comforting. It was how the Paladins snuck up on them, they didn’t smell that the fire wasn’t their own until the first ones had started to burn.

“It always got me punished,” he says finally. It doesn’t matter if the boy laughs or tells him he deserves to get punished, that’s nothing he doesn’t know, “so I stopped.”

“They’re not here,” comes the reply, “it’s just me and the horse. We won’t punish you.”

“I’ve done too much for the forest to help me now.”

“No you haven’t.”

He looks at him curiously.

“My friend did horrible things too. Killed loads of people and everyone was scared, so she tried to stop. But when she called on the forest, it always helped her,” he shrugs and sits next to him, “I can hold your other hand if you’re afraid.”

He feels his hand being grasped by the child. The touch startles him, it’s been a long time since anyone has touched him. It is the kindness that he didn’t expect at the end. He expected to be surrounded by people afraid of him, whether they were the brothers he had chosen or the brothers he was born to, he couldn’t say. But the fear was universal in them regardless. It was, perhaps, the one thing they had in common.

“You’re very brave,” he says finally, “and clever. You’ll be able to find them.”

The boy looks at him, seeming to realize he has no intention of doing what is being suggested. He’s familiar with boys who are forced to grow too fast, the ruthless things you must do to survive. He knows the Knight was right, he has forced many children to give up their innocence. He knows the hellfires that await him. He wonders if all of them have remained alive like the boy here. He thinks that they all may have shown him the kindness. The mercy. Odd that he should find it right before death.

“You’ll help me,” the boy tells him and without an ounce of remorse, he takes their clasped hands and flattens his against the soft earth.

The reaction is as damn fast as it always is.

It hurts just as much.

The green whispers through him and pulls him back together. He thinks he screams but he can’t be sure. He’s not sure if he exists at all or if he’s just part of it. Tracking is one thing, it’s removed. Letting the green do its work in him, that is something he’s successfully avoided since boyhood. It takes everything. Every wound, every bruise. He has to shove himself away from the tree lest his back close around his cloak. The green works and works, knitting back together every hurt. He’s part of it for endless, terrifying moments before it spits him back out, whole for the first time he can remember.

He gasps and longs for the pain.

He gasps and becomes aware of Squirrel’s hand locked around his wrist, not letting go. The green has worked on him too. His bruises and cuts are gone. Lancelot remembers his mother connecting him to the green a lifetime ago, but the memory has been pushed so far back he’s surprised he recalled it at all. Squirrel looks surprised and prods at his eye, realizing it doesn’t hurt anymore.

“How did you do that?” He asks.

“I don’t remember,” Lancelot tells him, “did I scream?” He looks around. The horse is grazing peacefully nearby so he couldn’t have. Not like it felt he was, “are you alright?”

“You healed me,” Squirrel points out.

“So physically at least,” Lancelot says. Now he realizes that he doesn’t have his main weapon. Damn. “I need a sword.”

Squirrel perks up.

“I know where we can find one.”


	2. Chapter 2

Lancelot knows he’s off balance.

Seismically, everything has shifted. Father was always adamant that he had to walk the Road. He always strove for it, but it always seemed impossible past that first step. He had spent years tortured with the fact that the Road was closed to him. That God was repulsed by him. No matter how much he did in His service, it was not enough. Lancelot knows it was a tool used to motivate him. At the time it did not matter because he agreed. Away from it, he sees things more clearly. The shift is still big, it’s earth shattering. He almost longs to be injured again so his mind can be focused on breathing instead of that.

“So why did you save me?”

Or that.

Squirrel has not shut up since the woods. Lancelot does not know how he has so many words in him or where he’s getting the energy from. He’s put the boy on the horse while he walks on foot just to have some damn space between them, but the hint has gone right over Squirrel’s head. Which makes sense because the boy is a child. The idea of him being warped like Lancelot knows he was warped was horrifying, but some evil part of him thinks at least then the boy would be quiet. Instead of asking a thousand questions and prattling on about a home and a people that Lancelot knows he took from him. It’s a flagellation he deserves, but it’s wearing on his patience.

“Why are we stopping?”

He ignores the question and shrugs off his cloak and tunic.

“What’s that?”

He continues to ignore the questions and undoes the girdle, pulling off the hairshirt. Of course his silence is not taken well, he hears Squirrel hop off the horse. Lancelot ignores him as best he can and reaches for his tunic, nearly toppling the boy in the process. For a boy who has seen some truly awful things, Squirrel still looks stunned at his torso. Even the green cannot take the old scars that dot his flesh, though the chafing of the hairshirt makes them look worse.

“Why are you wearing that? It looks like it hurts.”

“That’s the point,” he says.

“Why would you make clothing that hurts?”

“To atone for sinning.”

“Was rescuing me a sin?”

The boy really is too damn clever. Lancelot wants to say that it was but it doesn’t feel like one. It feels like the least sinful thing he’s done in a very long time. He pulls on his tunic and cloak. Both breathe easily against his chaffed skin. He picks up the shirt and puts it in the saddlebag before turning back to Squirrel to help him onto the horse.

“No, that’s why I’m taking it off.”

“But you’ve been wearing it this whole time,” Squirrel says, “do you always wear it or just after you burn down a village?”

Lancelot picks up the reins. Maybe something will spook the horse and it will trample him.

“Always,” he says.

“Do you sin that much?”

“Yes,” he says, thinking that will be the end of it.

“Why?”

Evidently the horse is not going to trample him. He’s used to obedience from his steeds. Both of them are traitors, it would seem. He stops and turns around. Sitting astride the mount, Squirrel doesn’t look like sin. He looks like a boy. Lancelot has always know he was different fundamentally from the Brothers, but the idea of twisting someone so young makes his stomach roll. It is not the boy’s fault he was born of the Fey. Suddenly the actions of the Brothers and the Church seem far more like hubris than piety. They seem like blasphemy.

“In the eyes of the Church, being Fey is a sin,”. He says.

“I know that,” Squirrel says with an eye roll.

“That’s why I wear that,” Lancelot says.

“So you’ve been punishing yourself every day because you were born a Fey?”

When it’s put like that, it seems foolish. But it is the truth and Lancelot nods. Squirrel is blissfully quiet. Though his silence comes at a moment when Lancelot finds he actually wants to hear what the boy has to say. Squirrel is quiet for a moment longer and then turns around, fishing the hairshirt out of the bag. He holds it in his hands, frowning at the irritation it causes. He looks at Lancelot for a moment and then hurls the thing as far as he can. Admittedly it’s not as far as he probably intended, the shirt isn’t terribly aerodynamic and it lands with a plop in a puddle of muddied road.

“Why did you do that?” He asks.

“So you don’t put it on again,” Squirrel replies.

Lancelot knows they cannot leave evidence like that behind. He had no choice but to go and pick up the garment. What surprises him is how much he wants to leave it there. He doesn’t want to touch it, though he feels like he should long for it. He walks over to the garment and picks it up. He’s not foolish enough to think the action of getting rid of the shirt will mean getting rid of his burdens. But when he sends it farther off the road and Squirrel lets out a whoop, he feels as though he’s done something good. He picks up the horses reins and resumes leading onwards.

“I bet you feel better. Gawain always felt better after taking off his armor.”

The name of his old enemy is almost as odd as his own name. Though he’s not sure what to call him, if enemy is really appropriate. He’s not sure of anything really. His stark world has become muddled, with only the certainty that the Brotherhood will kill him if they find him. He would say the rest of the Fey would too, but that’s not a certainty like the others. Lancelot’s only hope has been that he will be put into purgatory. That perhaps his deeds will be great enough that God will save him from the hellfire.

Kindness is not something he’s hoped for in a very long time.

“Will you tell me about him?”

Squirrel perks up more, if possible, and begins to rattle off everything he knows. It’s a young boys dream, some mix of fantasy and reality painted by second hand stories. Lancelot isn’t sure what is fact and fiction, but that isn’t important. He’s not hunting the knight. This is a story, not information he can use or lessons he can learn. Just a story told by a young boy who can still believe in those in a way that doesn’t leave marks on his skin. Lancelot lets the words wash over him as they make their way down the road, pausing only long enough to put his cloak in saddlebags. Without the hairshirt, there’s room for it.

For the first time in a very long time, he lets the green whisper to him as he walks down the road with the sun on his face and Squirrel’s story in his ear.


End file.
